Tagalog Romance Novels: An Undermined Filipino Discovery

I was a Comparative Literature major back in college. I studied theories on gender relations, gay literature, popular culture, feminist writings and what have you. My classmates spouted Propp, Derrida, Lacan and Levi Strauss (before I shifted to CL, I thought Levi Strauss was the founder of Levi’s, not a theorist). Although I was not left floundering (our library closes at 12 midnight so you can guess where I stayed when I didn’t have money to go out of the campus), I just couldn’t get myself to the same “high” they would be when discussing the parallelisms of Deconstruction and the ideas of binary opposition.
But like the makahiya, I had my natural defense mechanism. Whereas the aforementioned plant would curl up, I joked. Whenever one of my classmates asks, “Hey, do you know who Derrida worked with on this and that theory?” I’d say, “No, but do you know Martha Cecilia’s latest book in her Kristine series?” Believe me when I tell you that saying that invariably saved me from betraying my semi-ignorance. Especially when I accidentally read the name Homi K. Bhaba as Bhomik Bhaba.
We were training to become academics. We read ‘serious’ literature. But there are times when those tend to overwhelm even brilliant minds such as my friend Maj’s and mine. Our other classmates turned to partying, others mountain climbing. Maj and I read Tagalog romance novels. Not only are they wildly entertaining, they also challenge the extent of one’s imagination. Can you picture seven brothers – all unbelievably gorgeous complete with charm, physique plus wealth and breeding – falling in love with uniquely beautiful, virtuous women in succession over the next seven months or so? Did I also mention that these seven brothers have their own estates and possess ridiculously expensive luxury cars? Oh, they also own islands – each of them. Pretty unbelievable, right? The answer would be yes, and that would be the reason why they’re such good reads. They’re so highly entertaining – the whole storyline removes you from reality better than a George Lucas move could.
And for a Bisaya kid in Manila, it’s a great language teaching tool. I can understand Tagalog all too well. I mean, I do watch Tagalog movies and television shows. It’s the speaking that gets me. Anyway, reading those books aloud (with an audience so that they can correct your pretty ‘baluktot’ tongue) certainly helped me in the speaking department. Going back to said novels, they are undoubtedly one of the best “inventions” of the Pinoy mind. They’re pretty cheap, considering all the things you get out of them: inspiration, amusement, what else… Oh, and the validation that the Filipino indeed is worth the exasperation we all feel from time to time. After all, for the price of an economy e-load you’ve lived somebody else’s up and downs without the heartbreak (although one may be moved to tears, depending on the plot) and therapy sessions. So go ahead and educate yourself on the fine art that is the Tagalog romance novel. Give yourself a break from the telenovelas and practice literacy. Who knows? It might inspire you to write your own love story – made up or true to life; your choice.

Such Are The Signs...

Living in Pasig City has its convenience. I ‘m near Ortigas – the business district away from Makati. From the house I share with two other college friends, I’m about five minutes away from Libis – party central, a ride away from two major malls: Robinsons Galleria and SM Megamall. And speaking of Megamall, therein resides my ground zero (e.g. ‘ground zero’ is Douglas Coupland’s Generation X term for the place wherein you’d like to be in the event of a nuclear war): Powerbooks. It’s like a big library with the latest music piped in. Whenever I have free time I usually go there just walking through the whole store first. It’s as if I have to breathe in the sense of welcoming that I feel there. Then, I go to the shelves where they store the romance novels. I find it easier to read them in Powerbooks. On the average I can read a thick romance paperback in under an hour so before lunch time I would have read about 2 and a half novels.
The one time that I went there I was looking for a book by a particular author. Strange, I thought, that I couldn’t find it where it was usually placed. Then I turned around and found it piled under the shelf with the heading “Science Fiction and Fantasy.” Odd, I thought, as I pulled the opened copy and went to my usual seat. Then I got to thinking: this novel is about a tall, dark, handsome man born from a privileged family and graduated from a prestigious school. He is charming, smart and does not kick dogs. The heroine is a feisty, witty, well-educated woman. Far from being classically beautiful, she is red-haired, green-eyed and is usually found trading snide remarks with the hero. The hero is intrigued with this woman who dared oppose him. After all, with that face, that body and that bank account – what woman in her right mind would go against him? But this woman does. To make the long story short, after much beating around the bush and a diabolical plot that almost kills both of them, they become lovers and sail off into the sunset – with a ring on the woman’s finger, of course .
Which brings us back to the reason why this book was found under the Science Fiction section. Maybe the previous reader got too tired and placed it there. Maybe a guy browsed through the book, found out it was a romantic story and ditched it in favor of the newest Terri Pratchett. The point is, it is pretty significant – not to mention funny – to find a story of love side by side with stories of make-believe worlds. It seems to begging for analysis, or is it just me?
The book’s placing might have been accidental, but it recalls several overheard conversations on how love is becoming obsolete or if not that, unnecessary. What ever happened to “What the world needs now is love, sweet love”? Do people still believe in the mysterious facets of love? Or more to the point, do people of my generation still subscribe to the ideals portrayed in romance novels?
To answer the question, I asked my friends (hardly a number representing my generation, but I’m working on a pseudo-theory here, not one for the Nobel) if they still believe in love. The best place for this discussion - at least for us - is not somebody’s apartment with cans of beer lying around and the people are half-sloshed to make any sense, but where else? A coffee shop. There is a certain ambience that a coffee shop provides when one wants to discuss simulated intellectual conversation. Somehow it feels as if everyone’s a little relaxed and the history behind a coffee shop (brings to mind Hemingway and other American expatriates in Paris, buying coffee because it’s all they can afford, shooting off ideas to add on to their future Pultizer- and Noble- Prize winning works) seems to force people to be a little more profound than they usually are.
It’s 11 pm and we’ve ordered our over-prized, whipped-cream-masked-coffee. We start talking about how we never thought to get where we are right now, when roughly 9 to 10 years ago we were wearing uniforms and our foremost thoughts were that of waiting for the recess bell to ring and dreading dismissal because for some of us, it was our turn to sweep the whole classroom. Now, look where we are. Sitting around in a coffee shop at this ungodly hour, no parents to supervise us and not even worrying if tomorrow is a school day. Then for some reason the talk goes to how in this group four of us are single. The Attached One, as we will call her, offers no insight. She says “It’s probably not your time.” The two Heartbroken Ones disagree. “What? And it was our time to get hurt?” The other two Uninitiated shrug, preferring to listen rather than talk about themselves, for once. Attached says “You know what they say, ‘Relationships are like taxis: there when you don’t want one and nowhere to be found when you need one.’” Heartbroken One replies, “Hah! Who needs it?!” Heartbroken Two responds, “It’s societal pressure. That’s all there is to it.” One of the Uninitiated leaps at the thought and counter “So, you’re saying that society pressures people to have someone else?” Before HT can answer, the other Uninitiated person in the table responds “Of course. We were all reared to believe that no man is an island. And although bridges have been built, it’s still unthinkable for said island to survive alone.”
All in all, it was a fascinating conversation. It should be. We closed the place at 3 am, all still feeling the caffeine buzz that set us back a hundred bucks or so. We never really reached a conclusion as to love and what-nots. During the taxi ride, I was thinking whether I had answered what I had asked myself at the bookstore: does my generation still believe in love? So, I turned from the window and poked my sleepy seatmate, Heartbroken One. “Hey, do you still believe in love?” She appears not to have heard me, so I sighed and went back to pondering the city lights. I figured that I was not going to get any answer, when nearing the bridge that connected our part of Pasig to Ortigas, HO said, “Love? In all its complexities, glories and heartaches, it is still the one reason why we’re all paradoxically sane and insane.” I smiled. I knew going to a coffee shop would dig up the mushy poet in my otherwise taciturn friend. I saw “The Sign” that marked the alleyway into our house, turned to her and smiled. Wait. “So, that’s a yes, right?”

High School Revisited

Maybe it was no accident that my high school graduation song is the Hunchback of Notre Dame’s theme, Someday. The song sings of hope, that someday indeed, things can be different – will be different, can and will be better. I wonder how many of us realized that when we sang it the day we officially left high school. Has “someday” arrived for some of us yet?
Having had two pseudo-reunions, I had no chance of asking this of any of my classmates. Something always held me back. During these reunions, there’s a feeling of camaraderie that was absent back when we were in high school. People ask each other how they’re doing knowing that back then, these same people only talked to you to ask if the teacher had indeed said that there was an exam scheduled for today. Maybe I am being a tad too harsh. Some are genuinely interested in how the other half lives, but I can’t help but think if these reunions are a way to touch-base to the time when things were not as complicated as they are now. Of course, I can’t fault the organizers for that. I wanted to somehow recreate that time, too. High school was like a preview of this period known as “The Time Of Your Life”. But only if you weren’t miserable that time.
Generally speaking, here in the Philippines high school was not the worst years of our lives. Even if one wasn’t popular or had few friends, it wasn’t the torture frequently portrayed in Hollywood movies. Sure, all the awkwardness and the mishaps of adolescence seem to be packed in four years, but it happened to everyone so we all had pretty much the same entries on the “Most Embarrassing Moments” List. Some were jocks (basketball, volleyball), some belonged to the popular crowd (the requirements were pretty vague, but I knew you had to know the lyrics to the top ten songs played on MTV), some were in the fringes of the popular crowd, and some were just there. In a population of 75 in the graduating class, we pretty much knew everyone else. But of course with callowness of youth, there were times that some had to be excluded to make room for the popular ones. I don’t think we were terribly cruel when we were young. Or maybe I just didn’t think that we were and that we really were. As they say, teen-agers are the cruelest creatures in the planet.
Looking back on all those years, they seem to be so far away from who we are now. Of course, I can’t speak for the whole class. Some of us have settled down and became adults. Some of us are still a little bit lost – trying to find our way around this big, bad world. Maybe that’s it. When we were in high school, we used to think that the world – our world was so small and we couldn’t wait to get out of it. And then came college. It was pretty scary, but exciting too. For some of us, it was a chance to start with a clean slate. For the others, it was there for us to continue what we had begun. But for all, it was another adventure. And we sure didn’t come out unscathed.
The first sem break I came home, everyone was in a dither trying to organize what could pass for a reunion. A lot of people attended, but not a lot has changed. We all had fun recounting how college treated us. Everything was still new and we had not encountered anything life-changing. Yet. The following school breaks were not occasions for reunions anymore. It seemed as if reminiscing about high school took a step back to actually living the life we already had. College had either overwhelmed us or we were actually doing a bit of growing up and wanted to leave high school behind.
To me, it looked like they were people who went out of their way to prove that they were adults. In the end, it just proved that all of us still needed a lot of growing up to do. I guess high school makes you realize that yeah, you had fun three-four years ago, but life goes on. And it can’t be necessarily bad.

Have You Seen Me Lately

At my age, my mom gave birth to me. At 22, I’m still trying to find my place in the world. Fortunately, I am blessed with parents who understand their only child’s need to be confused. Of course, it does not exempt them from wanting me to be the best I can be. They don’t pressure me – no whispering in my ear when I sleep – nothing like that. They simply drop hints here and there how I should make use of my easily spent (and my parents’ hard-earned money) education. The thing is I don’t exactly have the most practical degree in the world. I’m pretty handy around computers, but I can’t program one. The extent of my knowledge in repairing a computer is banging on the CPU so I don’t think I’m going to be such a success in that department. I’m pretty good with numbers; I can add, subtract, multiply and divide in my head with accuracy. Then again, so can a number of people. I’m absolutely terrified of calculus and back in college, I once cried during an advanced Trigonometry exam. I’m happy to say that I passed that exam, but it put me off any kind of mathematics that I shifted to a liberal arts course the following semester. While I don’t quail at the sight of blood or entrails, I just don’t see myself as a nurse (with their long hours and bed-pan duties) or a caretaker (I can hardly take care of myself).
So what does that leave me? A career in media or the arts. With the advent of artista searches, maybe I should join one. But then, I’m too old and I don’t think I can toughen my face up to sing (very badly) and dance (mediocre at best) in front of a crowd. I don’t have stage-fright – far from it. I do have boo-fright. Thankfully, I have never been booed off a stage, but I’ve seen some of my enterprising friends trying to put a brave face in front of hecklers. Scratch a career as an artista off. My organizational skills are confined to my hapless managing of my own schedule with the help of my trusty cell phone’s alarms and my hastily scribbled in folio. So that makes me such a terrible manager then. As for being an artist, I can’t draw worth anything even with a gun held to my head. Exhibit A, in college when I was shopping for a course after my ill-fated foray into Economics. I had the audacity to apply for admission to the College of Fine Arts. The University of the Philippines Diliman has produced some of the country’s inductees into the National Artists of the Philippines. And there I was, armed with my newly-borrowed serious artist-looking palette, brushes and pencils. I was standing outside the building where I was to go in for a talent test. One thing kept playing and rewinding in my head, “What talent? What talent? What talent?” I opened the door to the room and saw the professor telling the students to draw the muddy shoe on the table taking into consideration the light… I high-tailed it out of there as fast as I could. Nope, there is no such thing as the fine artist in me. Then there was the College of Mass Communication. I was in a Dawson’s Creek high. I wanted to become a film director. Several courses there and I realized that, nope. I’m no director. I can be bossy, but I can’t be creative on command. I can’t summon visions. My brain is not overflowing with creative juices.
After college-hopping, I ended up in the College of Arts and Letters. This March I graduated with a degree in BA Comparative Literature. Before you can ask, “What’s that?” the easiest way to explain it is that it’s a liberal arts degree. We study literature from all genres and – you know what? It’s not exactly a science so it’s quite difficult to explain what it is. Suffice it to say that it’s a pretty interesting study. But once you take it out of the academe and the sheltering walls of the university, it’s going to get lost in the crowd of the really practical degrees. It may impress some people for a while, but after its new-ness palls I’m left with a dilemma – what am I going to do with my life?
I’m a very big supporter of taking things one step at a time. This always worked for me when I was in school. It puts everything into perspective – everything that threatened to overwhelm me. It’s like a military strategy: regroup and rethink tactics. I was able to do my schoolwork and still have the kind of fun some people only see in movies. I went on road trips while writing notes on my paper due the next week. My friends and I brain stormed ideas over coffee and onion rings at a roadside café. I could watch a movie and make that a jumping point for my report. However, in the real world I’m floundering. I’m faced with a problem with which I cannot ask other people’s help: do I take any job that comes my way or look for something that makes use of what I was trained to for?
While I’m contemplating that I’m hitting the Internet and newspaper for want ads. At age 22, I’m still looking for myself. No one will ever see her, but me. In the meantime, my parents are waiting in the wings, wringing their hands in anticipation of what their daughter will turn out to be. Thank God for them.